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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29701683">she's looking through the wrong end of the telescope</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/unbridgeabledistances/pseuds/unbridgeabledistances'>unbridgeabledistances</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Owl House (Cartoon)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, Slow Burn, Yearning, amity is just! very anxious!!, lots of yearning</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 16:39:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,339</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29701683</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/unbridgeabledistances/pseuds/unbridgeabledistances</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Hey! Amity, right?”<br/>Amity’s head jolted up from the worn copy of <em>The Good Witch Azura</em> that she was reading. She quickly slid the cover under the cafeteria table.<br/>“Oh! Um, hi. Yeah! I’m Amity. That’s me.”<br/>Luz beamed down at her, and effortlessly slid into the open seat next to her.<br/>“Thought so! I remembered your intro from Fiction Writing. Well hey, listen— I’ve been looking for a partner for this writing project thing, and I don’t really know any people in the class that well— but hey, I saw you at the improv show last night and I was thinking—"<br/>“Yes! I mean. Yes. I’m down to work with you.” Amity could feel a blush rising to her cheeks and she fought with every fiber of her being to keep it down.<br/>“Great!”<br/><em>Wow.</em> Not only did Luz Noceda now know that Amity existed, but she knew Amity was at the improv show last night— the improv show that made Amity one of Luz’s pool of potential admirers if she was trying to narrow down who made the anonymous post about her. Something which Amity definitely, definitely should not have done.<br/>--<br/>Or, a non-magical college AU, in which Amity and Luz are both students at Isles University and much yearning ensues</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Amity Blight/Luz Noceda</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>67</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>she's looking through the wrong end of the telescope</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was a cheery, sunny Tuesday on the quad— it was the day after Labor Day, the classic date when campus always started humming again. Amity braced herself for the chill fall air as she pushed out the double doors at the front of the dorm and slid her headphones her ears—between the noise-proof headphones, her heavy Doc Martens and her freshly bleached and dyed blue-green hair, she hoped she gave off the air of “don’t talk to me” that she was trying to pull off.</p><p>It was the start of her senior year at Isles University—well, really it should have been the start of her junior year, but like usual Amity was always one step ahead, always racing towards her next milestone. She had piled on one and a half times the courseload she had needed to since she was a freshman so she could graduate a year early— maybe this way, she figured, her parents would finally stop nagging her about being an English major if she saved them a year of tuition, even if it still was just in-state. Amity had once had dreams of moving far away, of being somewhere <em>better</em> and warmer and classier for her college years, maybe a small liberal arts school in the Berkshires with ivy hanging on the marble walls of old libraries, with people who spoke in verses of poetry— but as usual, her parents had to be the dictators that they were and insisted that they would only pay for college if she majored in something practical. State school, and finishing her English major in three years, was the compromise. So now, Amity was keeping her head down— she was getting through these three years, and then she was getting the fuck out. Traveling somewhere she could write, all on her own— she’d get a cheap car, bring her laptop and drive through the country, see the world. She just had to survive eight more months.</p><p>Of course, it didn’t help that Boscha and Skara, her suitemates since freshman year, both decided to study abroad in Barcelona this semester so they could get shitfaced every night of the week, leaving Amity both lonely and friendless while she tried to crank through her credits and free herself from Isles U as soon as possible. Amity hadn’t really bothered to make friends other than Boscha and her crew freshman year— they were so mind-numbingly easy to sit next to in the dining hall, to follow from party to party on Friday nights while they all drank one too many cheap beers. So now that they were gone for a whole semester, Amity was honestly just looking to keep her head down— just 16 more weeks, and then she would have some sort of security in numbers again, and could blend back into the scenery of her friend group like she always did.</p><p>Amity had always hated the first day of the semester—the first day of school was bad enough in high school, back when all Amity had was Willow, and she would stick by her side in every class and through the winding halls as they walked from class to the cafeteria. In college, on top of the classic first day anxiety, there was getting-lost-on-campus anxiety, and will-I-make-friends-in-my-classes anxiety, and the when-and-where-should-I-eat-lunch anxiety; it was far too much for Amity’s lonely, under-caffeinated, protein-bar fueled brain to handle.</p><p>Her first class of the day was “Advanced Fiction Writing”— it was the last upper-level seminar in the English major that Amity had to get through, and she really wanted to get it out of the way. Of course, she would be a whole year younger than everyone else in the class since it was usually for seniors— typically Amity didn’t mind that too much, she could always hold her own in analyzing Chaucer or Yeats in a classroom full of “Intro to English” students, half of which who were baked or hungover and looked like they barely had the energy to drag themselves out of bed that morning. But Amity knew that this seminar would be different— this would be a bunch of senior English majors about to graduate, the wire-rimmed-glasses-wearing, bullet-journal-using lot of them, about to spread their wings and publish their shitty poetry for the world to read. And while Amity liked to think she had her shit together, she was a tiny bit intimidated by the impeccable pretentiousness of everyone else that she knew would be in the room.</p><p>She slid into Belos Hall, one of the larger stone buildings on campus that housed most of the humanities named after some rich alumnus. Amity had been to countless large lectures here— but this limited seminar was going to be in the one of the smaller classrooms, on the third floor at the top of a spiraling staircase. Amity climbed the stairs quickly and slid into the cramped room, hoping to remain somewhat unnoticed by her classmates— but of course, that was impossible when all the dusty room held was a narrow oval-shaped table ringed with eight or so upright leather chairs that were practically touching the walls. Amity fought back the urge to roll her eyes as she took in the cramped scenery. <em>This is cozy</em>.</p><p>Almost all her classmates were already there— Amity was usually the first one to her classes, but she had spent so much time looking at herself in the dorm bathroom mirror this morning, smoothing down her shirt and trying to untie the knot of nerves in her stomach and bracing herself for the day, that she’d barely had time to scarf down a protein bar in her dorm room before racing across the quad to class. She slid one of the leather chairs out from the table and let herself slouch in it, just for a second, and let out a quick puff of breath before straightening into her typical perfect posture. After she’d taken her notebook out of her bag and lined up her pens on her section of the table, she sneaked a glance up to look at her classmates appraisingly.</p><p>It was the classic crew, and Amity wasn’t surprised in the slightest— she recognized Mara, a girl she had been in a Shakespeare class with last spring who kept reciting series of lines that she had memorized whenever she made a comment in class, and Mattholomule, the English department suck-up who always answered professors’ rhetorical questions without raising his hand and who always wore a beanie no matter how hot it was outside. This was going to be a fun semester— Amity could handle a little pretentiousness, knew how to fight her way through the intellectual battle of wits, no matter how much intimidation was stirring in her gut. She looked down at her notebook again— and just then, a flash of purple just to her right caught her eye. Amity glanced up. There was a girl that she hadn’t seen before, not in any of her classes; a girl with olive skin and a short, slick haircut and black stud earrings. But that wasn’t the first thing Amity noticed— the first thing she noticed is that this girl was wearing a cat hoodie. Until this moment, Amity would not have said that she knew someone who could unironically pull off a cat hoodie, but for some reason, this girl could; she paired it with a pair of simple dark wash jeans and tan sneakers, that weren’t Amity’s style at all but somehow looked effortless on her. <em>Huh</em>. She was kind of cute— cute in a weird way. That was all Amity could gather from her side profile before the professor glided through the door.</p><p>Professor Clawthorne, or Eda, as she insisted they all call her, was one of the most well-known professors at Isles University— she’d written a book series for teens that did fairly well, and then solidified her gig teaching fiction at the college. Amity had been geeking out about going to the school that Eda Clawthorne taught at for years, and that fact was honestly half of the reason she applied to Isles U in the first place. Amity straightened in her seat, watching dust float and catch light in the small sun-warmed room before focusing on where Eda sat at the head of the oval table, arranging the leather-bound notebooks she had carried with her into the room. She was wearing round wire-rimmed glasses and a burgundy turtleneck, and had a halo of fluffy, wispy white hair crowning her head. Her piercing eyes, one grey and one a warm caramel-like hazel, swept around the circle of the students’ faces, most of whom were still zoning out and checking their phone—pretty much everyone except for Cat Girl, Amity noticed, who was sitting as upright and alert as Amity was herself.</p><p>“Hello everyone,” Eda nearly purred, with a smooth voice reminiscent of melting butterscotch candy. “My name is Professor Clawthorne, but you are all free to call me Eda. Welcome to Advanced Fiction Writing. I can’t wait to see what stories you all have in store for me.”</p><p>Amity scanned the room again— everyone seemed to be paying attention now, hanging on to Eda’s every word.</p><p>“Why don’t we start with some introductions?” Eda continued, with slightly more pep in her voice. “I know most of you know each other, but it seems we have an underclassman joining us this semester as well.”</p><p>Amity could feel her neck flush red. <em>Perfect</em>. She didn’t realize Professor Clawthorne would know she was worming her way into this seminar a year early—<em>Don’t overthink things</em>, she reminded herself, forcing herself to take a deep breath. <em>I’m sure Eda will still be impressed with what you write. You can do this.</em></p><p>“Let’s all go around and say our names, our majors, our pronouns, and something interesting about ourselves.”</p><p>Amity’s heart froze. <em>Jesus Christ. Please not a fun fact, anything but a fun fact.</em></p><p>“But let’s shake it up a bit. How about we say… if you were an ice cream flavor, what ice cream flavor would you be.”</p><p><em>Ugh.</em> Slightly better than a fun fact, but not by much. If Amity hated one thing, it was icebreakers; there was too much pressure to think of something <em>interesting</em>, the perfect balance of funny and intriguing but not too braggy. If she was being honest, if she was an ice cream flavor, she thought she would probably be vanilla; it was her favorite because it was simple, it cut straight to the chase and didn’t mess around. Amity tuned in as Eda signaled for the introductions to start, beginning with a slumped senior wearing a hoodie who didn’t bring a notebook to class.</p><p>“Uh. Hey. I’m Jerbo, but you can just call me J. He/him. English major. And uh… I guess I’d be vanilla?”</p><p><em>Crap. </em>Leave it to Jerbo being completely stoned in their first class of the semester to take Amity’s perfectly reasonable icebreaker idea. <em>Okay, okay, I’ll just do… chocolate.</em></p><p>“What’s up everyone! Hope you all had a rockin’ summer— I personally was in Italy doing an apprenticeship as a bookbinder near the Alps, and I enriched my understanding of the classics— anyways, I’m Mattholomule, he/him, double major in English and History, and I had the most amazing, locally made chocolate gelato while I was abroad this summer, so if I was an ice cream flavor I would be that.”</p><p>Amity knew perfectly well that Mattholomule had been home this summer, working at his parents’ hardware store down the road from campus— but leave it to the hipster-wannabe to lie through his teeth <em>and</em> steal her ice cream flavor. <em>Fuck</em>. Amity started to wrack her brain for another quirky answer to the question. <em>Mint Chip? That’s pretty polarizing…. Peanut butter?</em> But before she could over-think even farther, a cheery voice piped up from across the room. Amity looked over. It was her. Cat Girl. And she <em>definitely</em> seemed the most enthused about this icebreaker situation.</p><p>“Howdy everybody! I’m Luz Noceda, she/her, and I’m an English major, creative writing track. And if I was an ice cream flavor I’d have to be my absolute favorite, which is <em>helado de morir soñando</em>, this super creamy and deliiiicious orange ice cream that my mom and I always get from the Dominican market. And Eda, I just wanted to say that I’m so excited to be in your class! Professor Clawthorne’s been my advisor for four years, but I just got the chance to take a class with her for the first time this semester and I am READY!”</p><p>If Amity wasn’t starstruck by Cat Girl— <em>Luz</em>, she reminded herself—before she spoke in class, well, now she was totally and utterly gone. She’d never seen someone so happy and radiant and glowing and—<em>get a grip</em>. The creative writing major explained a lot; the creative writing track pretty much stuck to themselves, not doing any of the big lecture classes and taking small seminars like this one for all four years instead. That was why Amity had never seen Luz in her three years on campus—she knew she never had, because she could <em>never</em> have been able to forget Luz’s warm voice, and the confidence Amity could already tell was radiating off of her— a confidence that Amity herself used to have, before she put all her dreams on the sidelines.</p><p>The introductions continued— Amity coolly stumbled her way through “I’m Amity, she/her, English major, strawberry” (because who <em>doesn’t</em> like strawberry ice cream), and then Eda began her first lecture about characterization. Her voice wafted through the room, pooling like the sunlight drifting in through the windows; usually Amity kept her head down in class and scratched down hyper-detailed notes in her notebook, but today she was having some trouble focusing. Instead, she took a <em>lot</em> of mental notes; like how Luz had on shiny black nail polish that was chipped at the edges, and that her spiral notebook had a picture of an otter on the cover, and that her eyes lit up and crinkled in excitement every time Eda said something particularly important. Luz was overly engaged the whole class, but not in that annoying way that English majors sometimes are—in the way you could tell she <em>cared</em> what she was doing with her life, cared why she was here.</p><p>“And lastly, I wanted to end this first class the way I always do, by asking you budding English graduates the very important question of <em>why</em> you write. Luz? Would you like to start us off?”</p><p>Luz smiled wide. “I write because it helps me disappear into other places.”</p><p>Amity felt the panic closing in. Leave it to Professor Clawthorne to be digging out all of the deep and personal questions on the first day.</p><p>“Well said, Luz. Mattholomule?”</p><p>“I write to leave my imprint on the world, because I know my existence is fleeting.”</p><p>Amity had to force herself not to roll her eyes. <em>Focus. Okay. Why do I write?</em></p><p>
  <em>To make new worlds. To forget myself. To disappear. </em>
</p><p>“Amity?”</p><p>“Um. I write because… writing is like <em>magic.</em>”</p><p>A sly smile stretched across Eda’s face. “I certainly agree.”</p><p>Amity smiled back, then looked shyly at the table. She could feel someone else’s eyes on her, and looked across the room. Luz was grinning at her and gave a sly thumbs-up. “I like your answer,” she mouthed.</p><p>Amity very nearly gasped—instead she gave Luz a tight smile back and looked at the table. <em>Uh oh.</em></p><p>“Alright everyone, that concludes the first class. Reminder that your first partnered writing assignment is due in two weeks; writing can be a very lonely act, which is why I want you to be working with a partner on crafting these first few pieces.” Eda paused, and glanced around the room again, her eyes settling on Amity.</p><p>“I want you both to push your own limits—writing isn’t about analyzing and interpreting, it’s about taking risks. About cutting your chest open and letting yourself bleed.”</p><p>Amity felt a shiver go down her spine. Being vulnerable was the absolute last thing that she wanted— she’d spent years building up walls, setting her sights high, pushing her feelings down. This semester wouldn’t be any different. <em>Fuck.</em></p><p>**</p><p>After Advanced Fiction Writing and an impressively boring lecture section of Literary Theory, Amity pushed her headphones over her ears again and headed to the large dining hall in the center of campus. This was the moment she had been dreading all day— walking through the too-crowded room in the middle of the lunch rush and trying to find a place that she could eat and bury her head in a book in peace, without worrying about muddling her way through small talk with a table of strangers or looking too awkward. Things would be so much easier if Boscha and Skara were here— she could just plop down beside them, and count on a lunch free from interruption as she nodded along to whatever stories they were telling about their weekend or whatever cruel comments they made about people in the dining hall.  </p><p>The awful truth was that she didn’t really consider Boscha or Skara her friends— they were more like co-workers, acquaintances, appendages of Amity that just made her life easier. But like limbs, she needed them for survival— as much as she could pretend she was calm and confident, facing the dining hall alone was Amity’s idea of an impossibly Herculean task.</p><p>She walked slowly up the hill in the middle of campus to the dining hall, trudging past groups of glowy-faced freshmen. She thought back to her first day on campus three falls ago; her parents, her sister and brother, and most importantly Willow, had been there to help her move in and see her off. She remembered eating lunch in the dining hall for the first time with Willow before they said goodbye, and Willow promising they would never, ever lose touch even now that they went to different colleges. “The Emperor’s Academy is only an hour-long bus ride away!”</p><p>Amity turned her music up even higher and walked into the dining hall. It was absolutely packed, buzzing with people and barely any empty seats. Not wanting to wait in line, Amity slid over to the salad bar and made herself a pathetic-looking tray.</p><p>
  <em>The moment of truth. Finding somewhere to sit.</em>
</p><p>She slid past the rugby team’s table, who were talking loudly and lobbing pieces of broccoli at each other’s heads, and zeroed in on a booth across the crowded room that didn’t seem to have anyone sitting at it. <em>Thank god.</em> Just as she was about to stake her claim and place her tray down in the tabletop, a group of three freshman very nearly collided with her.</p><p>“Oh, hey sorry! We were trying to snag that booth.”</p><p>Amity blinked. The person talking to her <em>had</em> to be a freshman—there was no way he wasn’t, since he was holding the same speckled cafeteria tray with a slice of pizza on it as the other two people standing next to him. But he couldn’t have been more than 15, 16 maybe, and was a head shorter than anyone around him.</p><p>“Oh. Um. Sorry, I can find somewhere else to sit.” Amity said in a strained voice.</p><p>“Nah, this place is packed! You can totally sit with us if you want to!” He said cheerfully, sliding into the edge of the booth after his friends. “I’m Gus, by the way. This is Cat and Viney.”</p><p>Amity froze. This was definitely not her ideal seating arrangement by any means, but it was better than cramming herself in somewhere else beside more unwelcoming strangers. Gus was already chattering away with the two girls, so Amity figured she could safely read her book in peace. She sat down across from Gus and rustled through her backpack.</p><p>“So, what’s your name?”</p><p>Amity looked up at Gus and abandoned all hope for a quiet lunch as she zipped her bag shut.</p><p>“I’m Amity.”</p><p>“Nice! What year are you?”</p><p>“I’m a junior. I mean, senior technically. Graduating early.”</p><p>“Wow! That’s awesome! I skipped some grades in high school, I totally get that. I’m so excited to be able to study biochem here, but my real passion is in computer science, which is how I met Cat in my class this morning, I helped her start to pick up some elementary coding—”</p><p>Amity began picking at the wilted leaves in her salad, letting Gus’s voice fade to the background as he continued to talk.</p><p>“So, do you think you’re gonna go?”</p><p>“Uh, sorry. Go to what?”</p><p>“The improv show! There’s one tonight for everyone, it’s on the freshman orientation calendar. We should totally all go.”</p><p>Amity held in a sigh. These sweet innocent freshmen, trying way too hard to make friends on the first day. There was no way she’d be caught dead at the improv show— it sounded like a crammed room reeking of desperation. <em>No thanks.</em></p><p>“Sorry, I can’t. I’ve got lots of work to do already. But that sounds… fun.”</p><p>“Suit yourself. Hey, Cat and Viney, wanna make a group chat so we can meet up later? Here, put your numbers in.”</p><p>Gus pulled his phone out of his back pocket and slid it across the table to the other two girls, one of whom was wearing a single silver dangly earring, and was cute in an edgy and intimidating way. <em>Not </em>cute <em>cute like Luz though</em>, Amity thought, and then immediately regretted it. What was wrong with her? She was alone on campus without Boscha and Skara for one day, and all of a sudden she had a soul-consuming crush on a girl she barely even knew. <em>Pathetic.</em></p><p>“Amity, are you sure you don’t want to come? You’re still free to join the group chat!” Gus placed the phone in front of her. “It’s okay if you aren’t up for it, but it’s always nice to, y’know, have some extra friends.” Gus smiled knowingly, like he was in on a secret. It dawned on Amity that he was trying to be nice— like, genuinely nice, because he knew how lonely and bewildered Amity was, a junior eating alone in the lunch rush on the first day.</p><p>Amity sighed out the air she’d been holding in her lungs. <em>Well, I do need to survive this semester.</em></p><p>“Uh— Okay, actually I will add my number. Thanks, Gus.” She mustered up a tight smile.</p><p>“No problemo, Amity the junior-but-actually-senior. Hey, I’ve got class soon, but we’ll see you later, yeah?” Gus added as he slid out of the booth, picking up Amity’s empty tray for her.</p><p>“Uh, yeah. I’ll let you know if I have time.”</p><p>Gus gave an exaggerated salute, then turned and walked through the sea of crowded tables. Amity slid out of the booth as well, and slung her backpack over her shoulder.</p><p>“It was nice to meet you guys,” she added halfheartedly to Cat and Viney as she left them chattering in the booth and forcefully shoved her way through the double-doors of the dining hall.</p><p>In the afternoon she had another lecture, this time about Victorian Literature, and then she finally was free to collapse in her bed for the rest of the afternoon. Amity needed to crash— she could feel the tight pit of anxiousness that had been in her chest all day long starting to melt away, leaving a heavy and solid tiredness in its place.</p><p>She slowly climbed the stairs of her dorm, rather than waiting for the elevator with the gaggle of girls on her hall that she hadn’t bothered to introduce herself to, and swiftly unlocked the door to her room. The past two years she’d lived in suites with Boscha and Skara, which meant sharing a spacious series of bedrooms joined by a common area and private bathroom— but this semester Amity had been forced to settle for a single, meaning that she was placed with all the other friendless upperclassman in a discarded room somewhere in the rafters of an old dorm building. Her room was on the top floor, the ceiling sharply slanted with the tilt of the roof, making her room feel almost cave-like or like an elaborate camping tent on a good day. Amity sighed loudly, just to break the silence that was hanging in the room, then slipped her backpack off her shoulder and onto the rickety desk chair.</p><p>Amity’s room was pretty bare; she hadn’t unpacked most of her stuff yet since arriving on campus a few days ago, opting to keep her room as minimalist as possible to avoid getting too comfortable in the 16 weeks before she could move back into a suite with Boscha and Skara again— where, yes, she’d have to deal with them sipping vodka from the bottle and blasting Miley Cyrus til 2 a.m. on most weekends, but at least she’d feel like she <em>belonged</em>. She didn’t know if being near Boscha and Skara really made her feel happy— but it at least made her feel happy-adjacent, like she was a part of something, like she was doing what she was supposed to for her college years (whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean).</p><p>So for now, the slanted walls of Amity’s single room were blank; the sun was starting to set behind the clouds, enveloping her room in the grey-blue shadows of the trees outside her dorm room’s single window that looked out onto a quiet parking lot ringed by the woods. Her creaky dorm bed had a quilt thrown over it, the same patchwork quilt from home that she’d used the past two years of college. Her desk was empty too, aside from a plain-looking desk lamp she’d picked out at Ikea freshman year— and in the corner of her desk, right where she could reach it from her bed, was her worn copy of the first book of <em>The Good Witch Azura</em>, the pages creased and the back cover practically falling off.</p><p>Hanging above the desk was the only thing on Amity’s walls, the only thing she’d bothered to put up— a punctuated line of four polaroids, clinging to the cinderblock wall of the dorm room with strips of scotch tape. No matter what other decorations and scraps of paper Amity left packed up and crammed into boxes, she didn’t have the heart not to hang these up this semester.</p><p>Still leaning against her desk chair, Amity’s eyes lingered on the string of pictures; the first was of Amity by herself, maybe four or five years old, bundled in a snowsuit with her cheeks glowing red and her face split open in a grin as she posed next to a snowman she’d made in Willow’s front yard. She thought one of Willow’s dads had snapped the picture, maybe— whenever being at home was too hard and Amity felt like her head was going to explode, she would always creep over to Willow’s front yard and tap gently at Willow’s bedroom window to ask if she could come out to play. Eventually Willow’s dads got the hint, and Amity found herself spending most afternoons at the Parks’ house, swimming in their kiddie pool and jumping in leaf piles and making snowmen.</p><p>The next polaroid was of her and Willow; she was a little older here, maybe in second or third grade, her cheeks smattered with freckles and her mussed brown hair falling into her eyes under a paper party hat as she clung to Willow, practically lifting her off the ground with her embrace. Willow’s glasses were askew, her frizzy black hair crowning her head and poofing out under her party hat— her lips were curved in a soft smile as Amity’s cheek pressed against hers, both of their eyes tightly squeezed shut.</p><p>Amity felt a pang in her gut, somewhere deep, like she was twisting a knife in her own abdomen. She ripped her gaze from the wall, slouching to perch on the edge of her rickety single bed. Willow was probably living a better life now anyways, with all of her smarter, cooler friends at the Emperor’s Academy. If Amity just hadn’t said all of those things to her, if she hadn’t pushed her away the second she had the chance…</p><p>Amity flopped back onto the bed and covered her head with her pillow. She layed like that for a second—just feeling the pressure of the pillow pressed on her face, listening to her hot breath blow in and out in the eerie silence of her dorm room. All she wanted was to take a nap— all of this wallowing about the past was just making her depressed.</p><p>Amity leaned and reached over to her desk chair, shuffling through her backpack until she found her laptop, then propped her pillow behind her to sit upright on the bed. She booted the laptop up and, without really thinking, clicked over to Facebook. This had pretty much been Amity’s daily ritual since moving back to campus— in the evenings, after her last class had finished but before it was an acceptable dinnertime, she would lay in bed and mindlessly doomscroll through social media to see what Boscha and Skara were doing: dancing at clubs, drinking cocktails on rooftop bars at sunsets, getting pastries at classy European sidewalk cafés. There were only a couple of new posts today; a picture that Skara posted, of her and Boscha with a bunch of unfamiliar faces having brunch at a fancy-looking café with bright white tablecloths, and an update to Boscha’s Instagram story with a picture of the sunset and a city skyline, with the caption “feeling at home in barça already &lt;3.” Amity let a quiet, strangled laugh out into the empty room. <em>Sure.</em> That could have been Amity right now— she could have been at that same café, drinking a foamy espresso and sitting between Skara and some tan, broad-shouldered Spanish boy who looked way out of their league, or standing on the rooftop with Boscha watching the sunset and listening to her mindless chatter. Amity kept staring at the group picture on her computer screen, fixating on every pixelated detail; Boscha’s perfectly-placed wavy hair, Skara carelessly placing an arm around her waist with a cappuccino in a china cup in her other hand. All at once, it struck Amity that she didn’t really miss them; she didn’t really <em>want</em> to be in Spain, to be towed down cobblestone streets to overpriced boutiques while taking selfies for Boscha’s Instagram feed. And she didn’t want Boscha and Skara here, either, not really; but the one problem was that without them Amity was alone— alone in the deepest, truest sense of the word.</p><p>She stared at the photo until her eyes burned from the blue light, thinking about what her life would be like right now if she was at a sunny sidewalk café, or in a used bookstore nestled on a Barcelona street corner— what her life would be like if it was normal, if she didn’t have so many hoops to jump through.</p><p>She exhaled, hovering her mouse over the “Comments” section of the post. “miss you girls so much&lt;3” she typed, nearly wincing as she clicked “Post” and slammed her laptop shut. She laid flat on her bed, watching the sun cast pink and grey shadows onto her ceiling as the room slowly filled with darkness. <em>Can someone go crazy without human contact for an entire semester?</em> Amity pressed the heel of her hands to her eyes, feeling the darkness and the stillness of the room hanging heavy around her. It was so… quiet, almost too quiet, and Amity wasn’t used to a silence this thick and deep. The shadows from the tree branches projecting onto her ceiling almost looked like dark tendrils crawling their way into her room— she could feel the dorm walls pressing in on her, like the slope of the ceiling was about to collapse. Amity felt an odd sense of panic bubbling up in her throat. <em>Don’t freak out. Focus. Breathe. </em>She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to force a deep breath into her lungs, past her ribcage and through her belly, and then slowly let it fizzle out of her mouth. She did it again, feeling her ribcage expand a little more easily this time, like a tight rubber band. <em>In for four counts. Out for eight</em>.</p><p>God. It was the first day of the semester, and already Amity was having panic attack alone in her room on a Tuesday night. <em>Talk about a wild college experience</em>. She was debating just curling up and going to bed, but she clicked her phone on and saw it was barely 6pm. She scrolled down on her home screen.</p><p>“No New Notifications”</p><p>Amity blew out a breath and sat up again, leaning to turn on her desk lamp that she could just barely reach from where she was nestled on her bed. The dim glow bounced off the white walls and made the space feel a little bit softer, a little warmer. She pressed the power button on her laptop again. A distraction— that was what she needed.</p><p>Her laptop hummed to life once more, and immediately opened to the Facebook page she had slammed shut. Amity quickly navigated away from Boscha’s page, trying to avoid fixing her eyes on her mind-numbingly stupid comment she’d left on the picture, and instead started to scroll through her feed. There were a couple of rogue posts from high school acquaintances, a couple of event invites to parties that Amity was definitely only invited to because she was part of Boscha and Skara’s crew— and then there was a post with nearly 50 comments, a post from the ‘Isles U Missed Connections’ page.</p><p>“to the babe with red hair who’s always by the pizza bar during the lunch rush- i know it’s ~cheesy~ but u’ve got a pizza my heart. text me? 202-555-0140”</p><p>The comment thread was full of people tagging their friends, practically anyone on campus:</p><p>“@Rachel Spark, is this u?”</p><p>“nah, i never get dining hall pizza, it tastes like cardboard. maybe it’s @Amelia Grove”</p><p>“omg yes @Rachel Spark, it’s me! i wonder who posted it?”</p><p>And on and on and on. Amity had to admit, it was kind of fun drama— everyone on campus was obsessed with the Isles U Missed Connections page, where people could post if they’d seen someone they’d thought was cute at a party or in the dining hall. More often than not it was a bunch of sleazebags from the rugby team hitting on pretty girls they’d seen from afar at the gym that they were too wimpy to hit on in real life— but there were cute posts, too, like someone complimenting a backpack they’d seen, or saying someone in their class did well on a presentation, and part of the appeal was that it was totally anonymous. Boscha and Skara spent a good chunk of the first month of freshman year obsessing over the page, refreshing it over and over the morning after they’d gone out to see if anyone had posted about them— Amity had always thought it was cute, sure, but she’d never been that obsessed.</p><p>She thumbed her mouse over to the link to the main page of ‘Isles U Missed Connections’ and clicked. There were hundreds and hundreds of posts, a good dozen from the last 24 hours, and plenty of people in comment threads tagging their friends and trying to crack the mystery of who had written the original post.</p><p>“to the girl who always gets an almond milk matcha latte at the campus café- i think you’re adorable and you always make my day”</p><p>“to the guy in room 214 in hexside hall– stop playing your music so fucking loud. please and thank you.”</p><p>Amity kept scrolling, the mindless stimulus somehow softening the panicky radio static that had been building in volume in her brain all evening.</p><p>All of a sudden her phone chimed— Amity nearly jumped out of her skin, startled by the ringer that was loud in her otherwise silent dorm room. She half expected a text from Skara about her amazing day in Barcelona and braced herself to write flowery, cheery reply—but when she unlocked her phone she saw a text from an unknown number, in a thread with two other long series of digits.</p><p>“improv show!!! r u in!!!? 🤪🥳🤪”</p><p>Amity had to fight the urge to roll her eyes. Though she would never be caught dead admitting it, part of her was relieved that Gus had texted— it was proof that someone <em>liked</em> her, that Amity had a shred of hope at making new friends despite this entire situation. She clicked her phone shut, not wanting to be the first to reply and turn Gus down right away, and kept scrolling through the Isles U Missed Connections page. Her phone buzzed again nearly seconds later— Cat and Viney were both in. Amity picked up her phone.</p><p>“sorry, sounds fun but i’ve got tons of work :( thanks anyways.”</p><p>She typed out her reply, her thumb hovering over the “Send” button. Amity glanced over at her copy of <em>Azura </em>sitting on her desk; her only plans for the night were to curl up in a blanket cocoon and re-read the soft, worn pages she’d read hundreds of times before, drifting away twisted in her bedsheets like she did almost every night, the four walls of her dorm room enclosing her in a deserted island of loneliness.</p><p>But maybe, this text— these five words and this string of awful emojis— maybe this was Amity’s rescue boat. Maybe this was her lifeline.</p><p>Before she could change her mind, Amity backspaced the text message. <em>Here goes nothing.</em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i think i have around ten chapters planned for this— i love some slow-burn content &amp; i really wanted to depict these bbys all grown up! also the title of this fic is from the song “turn it around” by lucius :)</p><p>also i’m sorry i made eda so boring &amp; stuffy in this chapter- i swear she will get more interesting lol, was just fulfilling the “university literature prof” stereotype</p><p>pls lmk if you enjoyed!&lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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